I liked the premise of the book more than the actual book. Thanks for the review copy. I’m sure others will like it more than I did. Thank you again for the review copy.

Tamara Shopsin’s novel Laserwriter II (MCD) will be published on October 19. It’s a funny and quirky book about ’90s-era Apple products and the people who fix them at New York City’s premier Mac repair shop, Tekserve. Tekserve was a real place! I never went there, but it was a fixture in Mac magazines and at Macworld Expo on the east coast.

The main character in Laserwriter II is a young woman who is taught the secrets of printer repair by the sages of Tekserve and works with a cast of characters—some pleasant, some unpleasant. It’s an enjoyable trip back in time with several laugh-out-loud passages. My only real criticism is that it’s too short, and left me wanting more.

Here’s a brief interview with the author: [text deleted]

4 stars

Tamara Shopsin’s debut novel, LaserWriter II, is slim and largely plotless, and yet somehow manages to be charming and totally compelling.

It’s a very quick read, but it has stuck in my mind in the weeks since I finished it.

LaserWriter II is a coming-of-age story about Claire, a young woman who gets a job at Tekserve, a famous (now long-closed) Apple repair shop in New York City in the 90s. She starts in intake and then moves up the ranks into repair technician. Along the way, she discovers that she is really good at repairing obscure and discontinued printers.

She finds that she loves the fiddly work of opening up old printers and meticulously cleaning every surface. She dives in, vacuuming out dust and searching for the source of mysterious problems through arcane and sometimes incomplete documentation.

LaserWriter II is a history of Tekserve and its founders, their driving principles, the way they loved Apple hardware. Their guiding principle was making their customers happy, even if that meant providing some services for free as a courtesy.

Reading this book made me wonder how much was fact and how much was fiction; this book doesn’t read like a memoir, but it also doesn’t read like a definitive historical record. It’s more like an impressionistic sketch of a bygone era. It contains enough truthiness to feel real, but comes filtered through Shopsin’s quirky, minimalist style, poetic in its simplicity.

LaserWriter II is a series of vignettes about the diverse and varied people who worked at Tekserve. The story is full of weirdos who came to the repair shop from all backgrounds and found their niche.

The book takes detours in and out of the workers’ lives, their stories all presumably based on actual former employees. Each new oddball Shopsin introduces illuminates another strange corner of the Tekserve community.

LaserWriter II is also a series of sketches where anthropomorphic printer parts discuss their many troubles. This usually happens while Claire digs in their innards trying to find a solution.

These bizarre interludes are strange and funny. They also help emphasize the way those old pieces of hardware felt like they had souls and personalities.

LaserWriter II is all of those things mashed together, in an odd, funny little novel. It’s light on its feet but full of depth, somehow simultaneously both insubstantial and overstuffed. Reading it made me want to spend more time in that place with those people.

The quirky story of Claire who has just obtained her dream job for nineteen working at the tech repair shop TekServe in the 1990’s. When we meet Claire she is looking for a job at the infamous shop to help repair Macs. Her family has owned every Apple Computer since it’s inception, she figures she is a shoe-in for the job. She quickly realizes she has no knowledge on how to actually repair computers and the interview is over.

She does eventually get the job doing intakes of computers and printers and is promoted to repairing laser printers. The team and Claire quickly realize she is quite good at this, and give her some of the most complex jobs.

That really is the gist of this book. It is kind of mundane, yet for some reason I could not stop reading this. The 90’s references are so good in this book, and Shopsin wrote a rich narrative of what it was like to work in that environment during that time.

Of course, all things must come to an end, as does TekServe and Claire’s short career there, however I was left wanting to read more. I am not sure everyone will love this story, but this one sure did leave me smiling.

Thank you NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an Advanced Reader’s Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Take a tech trip down memory lane with this quirky tale of a Mac repair company coalescing in the 90's and witness the inner workings of their intelligent and outlandish staff through the eyes of their newest hire, Claire. The sparse but highly informative and charismatic writing style crafts an easy going pace and satisfying atmosphere. Full of nostalgia and facts, this story is sure to please your inner geek.

This book is incredible! Characterization was sharp and precise. And those characters ranged from real persons, fictional persons, and components of computer hardware. This book is short. It made me so happy. Thank you for the ARC.

LaserWriter II by Tamara Shopsin is an enthralling and engrossing read with a great plot and characters! Well worth the read

LaserWriter II by Tamara Shopsin was short and sweet, to the point. I enjoyed it. I love the premise and overall writing style.

Short and sweet, albeit quite a bit more twee than I'd've preferred. It's a love letter to old school tech, to old school New York, to a simpler and gentler world and that's lovely... but I never found it compelling, and wondered ultimately about the 'why' of it all. Other than, obviously, Shopsin's evident love for the time and the subject.

This was a delightful read. I learned a lot about the beginnings of Apple computers, the process of repairing them and the cult status of those who repair them... oh yeah there was also a nice fiction story in there as well. The author has an electric way of creating multi dimensional characters and dialog for and a well plotted and memorable story. I look forward to reading other offerings from the author. Thank you to net Galley and the publisher for providing a copy to read. I will recommend this to my colleagues and to Apple lovers as well.

Perfectly captures a moment in time. There was a brief period when repairing a computer was not only possible, but encouraged. This book captures that fleeting era, with spot-on characterizations of the people who found themselves in the unlikely positions of fixing people's beloved Macs.

I found the interludes where the parts and pieces of printers and computers talking to each other a bit off, especially compared to the opportunities the author had for character development (most are accurate, but undefined); otherwise a fun and memory-poking read.

How on earth is a novel about a 1990’s computer repair company in NYC this charming?!? Loved Shopsin’s Stupid Arbitrary Goal and wanted to read her latest and I am oh so glad I did!

Thanks to Netgalley and FSG for the ebook. This is a fun book set in the MAC repair shop TekServe back in the Manhattan of the 90’s. Our guide is the young and shy Claire who gets around the city exclusively on her cheap bike and finds a solitary challenge in becoming a printer repair technician. The co-workers are fun and odd and somehow not half as odd as the customers, excluding a few celebrities that make cameos. The writing is sharp and fun. You even get to hear what the various parts of the printers say to one another as they are being repaired, but the story’s strongest creation is Claire and it’s great to spend this short time with her.